On May 8 and 9, 2012, I took a giant leap in my evolution and broke through an almost 4 decades-long bout of stage fright, performing two sold-out performances of my Super Ball Bounce Back Review, a combo concert/sing-along/party extravaganza at King King in Hollywood.

Lack of performing has always been a raw, gaping hole in a long career that’s stretched across various fields of the arts, despite the fact that I’ve always had the balls to throw myself off cliffs as I periodically dive-bomb into pursuits I know nothing about. I’ve hosted multimedia theme parties where I’m perenially on mic so that even the conversations I have with everyone are blasted throughout my house or wherever else I host these beasts. And God knows I walk around in hair and clothes that makes peoples’ necks snap if they’ve never gotten a gander of me before. Throw in that I’ve sold 50,000,000 records despite the fact that to this day I have no idea how to read, notate or play music, and I sold hundreds of paintings before I realized that you mix colors to get different colors. So backing away from displaying myself publicly made absolutely no sense.

But then I realized that this theme of living fearlessly was at the heart of everything I ever created. View life as a creative process. You are the canvas. If you’re stuck with a weakness, for God sakes turn it into a hook. Nine times out of ten, you’re the bogey monster scaring yourself shitless so just get out the way! So I finally did.

So here then are four videos from my Super Ball Bounce Back Review.  If you like them and are going to be in LA on September 21 and/or 22, I’m rising again at NoHoPAC in a salute to “September”, the first line of which mentions the date of the opening night.

“September”:

“Boogie Wonderland”:

“Neutron Dance”:

And the whole enchilada:

Badeya!

If you don’t know about my triumphant comeback live show a few weeks ago in Hollywood, start here.

After nearly sinking on the Titanic 6 months before, the success of these two sold-out performances meant more to me than anyone can imagine.

Not to mention the fact that I learned the importance of hiring professionals over friends who say they know how to do certain things, as well as learning the importance of rehearsals, something that prior to this was completely alien to my totally-spontaneous-fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants-without-a-net approach to every art form I participate in.

Many of the folks who appeared on stage with me as well as behind the scenes worked for gratis. I can’t thank all of you enough.

This was a massive breakthrough for me, the filling up of a big wide, raging hole in the gut of my career. Believe me, my gratitude extends a lot further than the soul food dinner thrown to thank you here at Willis Wonderland.

I can’t wait to get up on stage with all of you again. We’s family now. This was a life changer for me and you were all a massive part of it. Badeya!!!


A plethora of Super Ball Bounce Back cast party photos here.

.

On May 8 and 9, 2012 I had one of the greatest experiences of my career performing my Super Ball Bounce Back Review at King King in Hollywood. It not only was only the second and third performances I’d done since jumping off the stage in the middle of my own show in 1974, but was an attempted – and I’m happy to say TOTALLY TRIUMPHANT – comeback after one of the worst experiences of my career seven months before when 90% of the technology my first attempted comeback show was dependent on failed. But I knew that I had to get back up and practice what I preach: From some of the worst situations come the greatest miracles and I had proven to myself time and time again that, if nothing else, I was someone who had the courage to make lemonade out of big, fat lemons.

So I’m happy to report that I have risen from the ashes and had two of the greatest nights of my life bouncing back as a performer in a major way. I can’t thank everyone who came enough. And I can’t thank everyone who worked with me on the show enough.

So I leave you with a whole lotta photos from both nights, videos to come and a big, loud Badeya-say-do-you-remember there never has to be a cloudy day as long as you have sunshine inside. ENOY THE SHOW!!

Just a sprinkling of the over 2000 photos I’m still going through from my “Super Ball Bounce Back Review” live show at King King in Hollywood last Tuesday night, May 8.  There will be TONS more coming from both Tuesday and Wednesday nights performances at the top of next week, and a whole lotta videos after that.

Will post some from May 9 soon. And trillions of them this coming Monday. Badeya!

Rehearsals for my May 8 & 9 return to the stage in my Super Ball Bounce Back Review have begun. Given what happened at my last show in October this is very significant!

I also leave for Detroit on Sunday where I’ll be hosting a benefit greatest hits concert at my high school and telling stories of how some of my biggest hits were written while students perform the songs. This includes kids from the dance and drama classes, concert choir, marching band and ROTC drill team.

Don’t even ask me how excited I am about that! Plus it gives me a chance to rehearse some of the stories I’ll be telling at my live show in LA in May. I’ll also be speaking to students at my father’s high school as Cass becomes only the second high school ever to perform my musical, The Color Purple. And all this is stuffed in between 8 trillion meetings with movers and shakers, big and small, to feel out a couple of long term projects that I want to do in my beloved home town.

All of which means I’m going to be completely insane over the next 30 days, which will inevitably cut down on my blogging activities as time I may have spent writing is now going toward prep and rehearsal of those ever-important two days in May, not to mention my week in Detroit.

As a result, I’m going to try and become an interested little tweeter. I don’t know if this will work as I’ve resisted regular tweeting ever since the bird first launched. As an avid natural writer, I’ve always viewed the constant barrage of 140 characters as an invasion to my headspace. I’m also someone who likes to think about what I do, so longer than 140 has always suited me best. But, at least from where my head is right now, tweeting may save me as I try to report in tiny chunks as opposed to longer daily excursions. Here are my tweets from yesterday documenting my first steps toward the stage again:

Rehearsals for my Super Ball Bounce Back Review at King King May 8 & 9 have begun! http://kingkinghollywood.com/


(BTW,What are the chances of there being another A. Willis gracing the stage with me? Well, that’s exactly the case here. That’s A. (Akua) Willis in the hat.)

Perhaps one day I’ll learn the lyrics to my own songs… Creeping slowly through Boogie Wonderland.

Slashing the script right outta da gate with Richard Dorton, my SKILLED and WELL REHEARSED tech director.

I know these are nothing dramatic and so far the only way I’m interested in tweeting is if I can have a photo as a punchline. I put this one up this morning, though the photo’s just a photo and not a punchline:

We’racing 2 finish horror film that opens my new show @ KingKing May 8&9. Best of horrific tech failures frm last show.

I hate typos like ‘We’racing’. That happened in efforts to cut down to less than 140 characters so a photo could accompany the tweet.  In the old world I also wouldn’t have wanted to give away the fact that I was making a horror film of the most Titanic moments from the last show, but in a tweet-filled world there’s no room for secrets.

Today’s a free day at home, marking the start of the three day/three suitcase packing process. Hopefully the bug hasn’t hit me full strength just yet and I won’t become one of those tweeting fools who shows you every single thing I’m putting into those suitcases.

Of course, I couldn’t resist and just tweeted that. Now I just need to knock this down to 140 charcters:

My nimble assistants, Dina and Suellen, cut face masks and assemble souvenir multipurpose “Unisex Pendants and Keychains” made out of bubblegum charms that will be for sale at Allee Willis’ Super Ball Bounce Back Review May 8&9 at King King in Hollywood.

 

 

Before I co-wrote The Color Purple musical I had little interest in theatre. I had no desire to see people break out into song, oftentimes seemingly for no reason, and sing in that shrill kind of Broadway singing way, and leave not understanding or enjoying what I saw anyway. But I jumped at the chance to collaborate on TCP because it was such an incredible piece of literature, the most soulful on the planet.

After depriving myself of the genre for a lifetime, once I got the gig I spent a year in every regional theater, dinner theater, high school auditorium, every and any place I could bone up on musicals. Writing The Color Purple, though easily one of the hardest and most intense things I’ve ever undertaken, was also most pleasurable. And in the mere act of writing it I really understood that the theatre was not the stagnant-leftover-from-the-old-century medium I thought it was but, rather, a daredevil medium where you never know what’s going to happen as one actor coughs and it can turn the whole show.

Another thing I learned, as evidenced by the show as it’s currently being performed  at The Celebration Theatre in LA, is that this is a medium in which work can change drastically depending on who stages it. And I saw just exactly why I put up with five years of tears, laughter, compromise, bending so far over backwards I thought my body would split, epiphanies, road blocks and more, I.E. a microcosm of life stuffed into five years of  round-the-clock days, rewrites, and did I mention rewrites?

When the show opened in New York in 2005, we had a cast of 31 actors in the second largest theater on Broadway. On tour, the cast shrunk by a few actors but the stages were/are just as big, the auditoriums even bigger, and the staging was just a slightly skimmed down version from what it was on Broadway. But at the Celebration Theatre I got to see 19 actors stuffed into a 99 seat house, something I couldn’t have imagined working, but it was MINDBLOWING! Not only did everyone do their thing and then some, the intimacy of seeing the show staged for a tiny room with audiences on three sides of the stage worked so well for the piece I can’t tell you!

If you’ve never seen the musical you might think that this is a heavy, depressing couple of hours but ha ha, it’s a comedy, and an incredibly inspiring and uplifting adventure of someone who goes from less than nothing to the other end of the rainbow. If you live in LA I encourage you to see it. It’s here until the end of May.

Here are some photos from opening night at The Celebration Theatre a few weeks ago:

With my TCP collaborator, Stephen Bray:

With LaToya London, Shug Avery in the current production and Nettie in the second National Tour:

With Stephen and Michael A. Shepperd, a fiiiiine Mister indeed!

With Niketa Calame, an hysterical Squeak.

With Kelly Jenrette, a fantastic Nettie:

With Sixx Leah-Patrice Carter, Church soloist, and Lorie Moore, one of the hysterical Church Ladies:

With Harpo a.k.a. Terrance Spencer, and ensemble players Jonathan JT Thompkins and Akula Lyman.

With TCP director Michael Matthews, mo Church Ladies, and Kat Kramer.

With Na’Kia Bell Smith and Janet Washington, excellent young Nettie and Celie.

The opening was star-studded.  Here I am with my ol’ pal, Dana Delany.

I love Wendy Malick!

So excited that Robert Forster was there:

And Sharon Lawrence too!:

With Dana Delany and her Body Of Proof co-star, Nicholas Bishop

Director Michael Matthews, Artistic Director of the Celebration Theatre, JohnMichael Beck and the cast:

Go see The Color Purple and make Allee very happy!

Elvis is alive and well as Amelia Earhart on the corner of Tujunga and Magnolia in North Hollywood, CA. Carrying a propeller blade instead of a guitar, everything else about this Amelia screams the King, like her pompadour hairdo and bell bottom aviator pants.

I’m not nuts about that kind of feathering technique where it looks like a slasher took his aggression out in clay. The statue is quite large, Amelia herself least 10 feet tall, so the sculptor slasher really had room to go to town.

A little too foreshadowing for me as per Amelia is the circle of propeller blades that surround her bronzed clayness. For my money, it looks like she’s being circled by shark fins, which was most likely her fate.

I would’ve rethought this had I been the knife wielding sculptor.

Amelia was a proud resident of North Hollywood, where her statue is docked.

I used to make fun of the statue until I became friends with the teen idol I most swooned over as a kid, Fabian. I once gave him away as a prize at my Night of the Living Négligée pajama party.

I made a short film showing where Fabian would take the lucky winner of the “Win A Dream Date with Fabian” contest. The Amelia statue would be the first stop on their romantic landmarks tour.

Sorry the photo is so low res but it was 1989 and I had an excessively cheap and rarely working camera. If you think that’s low res, you should see the film we made.

I was carrying on about how bad the sculpture was until Fabian’s manager told me he was was great friends with the artist and not only did the city pay a hefty price for it/her but there’s another exact Amelia at the Burbank airport.

I know most people would never make the connection between Amelia Earhart and Fabian, let alone Amelia Earhart and Elvis, but that’s what makes life interesting through these eyes. I’d still ditch the shark fins had I been Ernest but I’m happy that Amelia is still standing tall, mere blocks from her home in beautiful North Hollywood.

New Year’s Eve, 2011. I’m coming down Sunset Plaza, a really windy road with million dollar homes right above Sunset Blvd. in LA. I’m in my Green Beetle, which is a lean and fast machine.

Sunset Plaza’s a pain in the ass to drive under any circumstance but nightmarish should you end up behind a slowwww driver, which is what fate dealt me this New Years when I was in a big hurry to get to my destination, my friends Nancye Ferguson and Jim Burn’s pad, an ultra modern built-for-Brian-DePalma-in-the-70’s house that teeters on stilts overlooking the city. Here’s the view from the balcony:

There are very few parking spaces to accommodate a small fraction of the 50 people on their way up there. If you don’t get one of those spaces you have to turn around in a teeny tiny cul-de-sac and drive a quarter mile out the little windy road with hardly any shoulder and a drop-down of hundreds of feet. And then you’re back out on the main winding road where there are about two parking spaces for every fifty people. No way am I limping back up that hill on foot! So I start leaning on the horn behind this little black car driving at funeral speed. To my credit, I only honked when there was enough room for the stupid driver to pull over so I could pass. Finally, after five minutes the car hugs the curb and I whiz past, gunning it extra hard to show my annoyance even further.

I get to the house and thank God there’s a space left. I pull in, put some lipstick on and send a few emails on my iPad before I go in. A couple of cars pass me and I don’t see them coming back down the hill, which means they must’ve found parking spots too. I finally get out of the car and trudge the last 20 feet up to the house. Standing there is my good friend, Beverly D’Angelo, with a guy I don’t know. Beverly and I go way back and I love her. She’s also an excellent party guest, a criteria I have incredibly high standards for, and has been coming to mine for years.

Just as I’m getting in hugging range I hear Snappy P yell, “Green Beetle, that must have been Allee!”. “You fucking asshole, you almost drove us off the road!!,” screams Beverly as I approach. Oh shit, I rarely misbehave behind the wheel anymore and now I’ve gone and terrorized a friend. But then it gets worse, “Meet Sid Krofft,” she says, referring to the mystery man next her, adding that she brought him to the party specifically to meet me. Now I’ve been waiting to meet this guy since the late 60’s when his puppets, marionettes and insane live action shows started ruling TV and now I’ve almost killed him. “I wanted to get out of the car and tell you what an asshole you were” he says. Thank God the Beetle was turbo-charged and he didn’t have a chance. I ate a lot of crow for the next few minutes, but it was immediately apparent that Beverly was completely right. This guy was a kindred spirit and we hit it off like we had known each other for decades.


Though Beverly had told Sid he HAD to come to Willis Wonderland, I went to his place first, now a couple weeks ago. I took hundreds of photos but I can’t show any of them because Sid’s a really private guy. But it’s as handcrafted as my place is times 6 trillion-on-steroids.

In actuality, I didn’t really get full tilt into the Kroffts back in the day when their shows were on the air because by then I was way way way deep into records and the radio. As a fan and later as a songwriter, when my radio habit lurched into twelfth gear and I lived and breathed music every millisecond of every day, I was still aware of that Sid and Marty Krofft name and that it stood for something crazy. But it really wasn’t until so many friends of mine insisted I go to an auction of their props at the Beverly Hills Hotel in 1998 that I realized the extent of that craziness as well as the magnitude of its reach. As a kitsch lover, how could I have not been familiar with every single detail of the Kroffts’ career, the guys on the throne at the top of the kitsch mountain??

YouTube, of course, makes for an excellent crash course. So I’ve seen more of the Krofft brothers’ magic in the last month than I have in my lifetime. And my respect and discovery of the depth of influence their work had on me subliminally has been a revelation. H.R. Pufnstuf is probably their most classic:

I don’t like to wake up early for social visits but at 82, Sid Krofft is in REMARKABLE shape, jogging 9 miles a day + a couple hours in the gym, so he’s raring to go when the sun comes up. 10:30 bright and early a couple of Tuesdays ago he and Beverly were at my doorstep.

I even got it together to cut up healthy food for him.

This is a BIG step for me as this is what’s more likely to be on that table on a regular basis:

Sid was as fascinated by Willis Wonderland as I was of his hand-built abode. As my yard is part of my living room, we hit that first.

Although it was raining when I took the following shot, you need to see those GORGEOUS 1950’s fiberglas fish lounges sans people:

As we strolled around outside we were joined by Donny Molls, a great artist and Sid’s next door neighbor:

We stopped and chatted in every room:

My downstairs, where that shot was taken, is particularly packed with memorabilia, some of which is Krofft Brothers stuff I’m happy to say I had the good sense to collect even if I wasn’t sure exactly what it was when I bought it.

If you’ve never seen Electra Woman and Dyna Girl, double up your sedation and watch now! EASILY one of the greatest title sequences in the annals of kitschdom:

Thank god I had a few View Master disks of Electra Woman and Dyna Girl in my collection too:

Sid and Michael Jackson were great friends so I pointed out some of my primo MJ cheese:

You really need to see what I’m pointing at. Yeah, I got the doll and the puzzle like a zillion other people…

…but who else do you know who has the drink cooler?! This is easily my favorite piece of MJ memorabilia I own:

When we got to my dining room…

… Sid posed in front of Mr. Wah Wah, a stunning portrait painted by my alter-ego, Bubbles the artist.:

We spent a lot of time in my recording studio too.

Although Sid has a computer he’s not obsessed with them as I am of my 11 networked Macs. So what we really wanted to do was show him how much of his stuff is online.

And there’s gaggles of it – H.R. Pufnstuf, Land Of The Lost, The Bugaloos, Lidsville, The Donny and Marie Show, not to mention Electra Woman and Dyna Girl for starters. And no exploration of Sid and Marty Kroffts would be complete without the Brady Bunch Variety Hour:

The Brady Bunch is certainly coming up A LOT lately!

One of THE most classic and cheesiest shows EVER on TV was called Pink Lady and Jeff. 1981. I remember being so intrigued by that nutty title that I tried to catch the show whenever I could. Imagine the complete and total ecstasy-breakdown I had when I saw the Pink ladies immortalizing my song,”Boogie Wonderland”:

Watching this again with the creator of that show who was totally in on the cheese joke of it all was even more thrilling. As we were poking around doing searches on YouTube I discovered that not only did Pink Lady do that quintessential performance of the song, they also recorded it. I’m still gasping for breath:

What a day I spent with the gang. Here’s one last parting shot for the photo LP before everyone left:

I sho love me some Sid Krofft!!


 

And now, the  Oscar for Best Motion Picture…. goes to… The Artist!

As I hunkered  down to watch the Oscars yesterday, the first time I had ever watched it alone due to pressing deadlines on my end, I remembered the last time I sat down to watch a global event unfold on TV. It was when Carmageddon was predicted when the 405 freeway had to close for a day in LA last summer. I thought about it a few days before and decided to go through my vast collection of digital images of bad album covers and match them to the demolition/construction events as they occurred in real time. Last night, as soon as I saw Mila Jovovich be the first star to walk down the red carpet…

…I realized I could take the same approach to the Oscars as Carmageddon as the stars continued to arrive:

I pride myself on being a daredevil artist, ready to field any creative challenge thrown down in seconds. So as the Oscars were announced, I gave myself between the time the presenter walked on stage til the moment the winner was announced to scan through close to 5000 images and pick the appropriate stinker LP cover for each category. Here then are The Allee Willis Museum Of Kitsch Oscar winners, in the order I posted them but starting with the after party and  final award, and ending with the stars arriving earlier in the day:

Have fun at the after parties!:

Best Motion Picture:

Best Actress:

Best Actor:

Best Director:

Best Animated Film:

Best Original Screenplay:

Best Original Song:

Best Original Score:

The inevitable speech by the head of the Academy:

Best Supporting Actor:

Best Special Effects:

Best Sound Mixing:

Best Supporting Actress:

Best Foreign Film:

Best Makeup:

Best Costume Design:

Sasha Baron Cohen wasn’t the only one who arrived carrying something:

The actors are looking especially fabulous:

Fashions continue to astound:

The stars are in exquisite fashions:

Congratulations to all the Allee Willis Museum Of Kitsch Oscar winners!

 

 

In addition to my classic cars, a 1955 Studebaker Commander. nd a ’55 DeSoto Fireflyte…

I also have a more common Beetle and Mini. Both of my classic cars have been up on blocks and serving as planters for years until mommy saves enough pennies to restore them. So it’s my more normal cars that cart me around on a daily basis. But I’ve never really been a fan of something that looks exactly like something else, especially if it’s as ubiquitous as a car. So soonafter I got both of them in 2004 – I’ve been a Beetle owner since they came out in 1999, this being my 3rd and final one – I looked around for every aftermarket piece of chrome I could find as both come as nude as cars can come. As a consequence, both vehicles are now abnormally overloaded. The Beetle, for example, has features like a grill and eyelashes…

…fancy shoes,…

… quite a fetching gas cap…

… and color-coordinated interior parts.

The Mini has custom seats,…

… blinged initials,…

…a custom steering wheel and gauges anywhere they would fit despite me not knowing what any of them do,…

…and now, a 1950’s Oldsmobile Rocket 88 hood ornament to make it even prettier!

I’ve collected old car parts for decades. I used to make furniture out of them:

When I realized that it just took up too much space building these things, I stopped. That was in 1988. But the voluminous amount of boxes full of door handles, hood ornaments, badges, and anything else used to decorate cars still fill my storage garage. Somehow it felt only natural to bring this baby out of the box and into the open-air.

This feat was accomplished by Mark Tomorsky, my art fabricator and Soup To Nuts stage partner.

Thank you, Mark, for desecrating my hood so that the Mini (and my hair) now have wings to fly!